In yet another ethically repugnant judicial decision, Texas district court judge Lee Yeakel struck down a Texas abortion law (SB 8) that prohibits 2nd trimester “dismemberment abortions” in which live humans are dismembered prior to death and then sucked out of their mothers’ wombs in pieces.

The law, passed by both the senate and house and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, would have permitted dismemberment of humans in utero as long as they were killed first by “injecting a chemical called digoxin into the woman’s abdomen; injecting potassium chloride directly into the heart; or inserting instruments through the cervix to cut the umbilical cord.” As barbaric as those methods are, they are less barbaric than death by dismemberment.

Dismemberment would violate every state’s laws on permissible ways to euthanize animals, and yet a Texas judge and Planned Parenthood barbarians prefer to dismember live humans rather than euthanize them first in more “humane” ways.

No compassionate, civilized human endorses killing tiny humans in the womb by any method, but until that legal right is eradicated, compassionate, civilized humans should seek to prevent the unborn, whose bodies have pain receptors by 10 weeks gestation, from experiencing the prolonged torment of having body parts ripped off one by one.

“Progressives” argue that requiring doctors to kill babies before they dismember them is ineffective and unsafe (Clearly, they’re referring to the safety of the mothers). So, here’s what a 2008 study reveals about the digoxin method of killing babies terminating pregnancies:

Intrafetal digoxin injection at a dose of 1.0 mg is safe and effective for fetal demise prior to pregnancy termination in the second trimester.

In testimony before the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, Dr. Maureen Condic, associate professor of neurobiology, adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, and director of human embryology instruction for the medical school and of human neuroanatomy for the dental school explained the timetable of brain development as pertains to pain perception:

The earliest connections between neurons in the… (regions of the brain involved in… pain perception) are detected by 37 days post sperm-egg fusion and are well established by 8-10 weeks…. Connections between the spinal cord and the thalamus, the region of the brain that is largely responsible for pain perception in both the fetus and the adult, begin to form around 12 weeks and are completed by 18 weeks.

An article on fetal surgery for spina bifida, which is performed between 19-25 weeks (i.e., the 2nd trimester), recommends the administration of pain medication to babies:

[I]t is not known definitively when fetuses can experience pain. Therefore, it seems prudent to provide analgesia during fetal surgical procedures.

This argument parallels one of the central arguments against abortion: If, as many on the Left claim, no one knows when life begins (or when “personhood” begins), then isn’t it prudent to provide protections against being killed to the unborn who are indisputably the product of conception between two humans, who are living, who have human DNA, and whose DNA is distinct from that of the women in whose bodies they are developing?

Yeakel wrote that the “State’s legitimate concern with the preservation of the life of the fetus”—an interest which he believes begins at birth—is subordinate to the “right” of a woman to have an abortion, which in Yeakel’s view is “absolute.”

Further, he concludes that “the State’s legitimate interest in fetal life does not allow the imposition of an additional medical procedure on the D&E—a procedure not driven by medical necessity.” He’s right. Requiring the expedient death of babies prior to dismemberment is not a medical necessity. It’s a moral necessity incumbent on even semi-civilized humans.

Pro-dismemberment-choicers object to the indelicate term “dismemberment abortion,” which lacks the euphemistic euphony of “dilation and evacuation” (D&E) upon which their anti-culture, anti-maternal savagery depends. Just as the movement to normalize deviant sexuality relies on language butchery, so too does the baby-butchery movement. “Dismemberment abortion,” though not technical medical language, is truthful plain-speaking that everyone understands, and linguistic clarity advances the cause of moral clarity.

One of the features that distinguishes humans from animals is our capacity to make moral choices—free decisions not driven by instinct. But some choices humans make render them less like humans and more like animals:

[M]other bears, felines, canids, primates, and many species of rodents—from rats to prairie dogs—have all been seen killing and eating their young. Insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds also have been implicated in killing, and sometimes devouring, the young of their own kind.

Humans find this behavior repellent in animals and then rationalize and celebrate it in humans.

Immediately after Yeakel’s decision was issued, Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, filed an appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, making it the third state to have a dismemberment ban pending in an appellate court. Many believe this case will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Let’s pray for wisdom at all judicial levels.

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Laurie Higgins became the Illinois Family Institute’s Cultural Affairs Writer in the fall of 2008. Prior to working for the IFI, Laurie worked full-time for eight years in Deerfield High School’s writing center in Deerfield, Illinois.
Her cultural commentaries have been carried on a number of pro-family websites nationally and internationally, and Laurie has appeared on numerous radio programs across the country. In addition, Laurie has spoken at the Council for National Policy and educational conferences sponsored by the Constitutional Coalition.
She has been married to her husband for forty-four years, and they have four grown children and nine grandchildren....